Dante's Third Circle of Hell

I love my kids. I really do. There's probably not anything I wouldn't do for them. I would walk through the fires of hell. Thus . . . I spent yesterday at a concert with these young men. I tried to go with an open mind. But, in fact, hell doesn't begin to describe it. Every song sounded the same, the sound system sucked, and mostly what I heard were teenybopper girls SHRIEKING. High-pitched shrieking. I spent $20 for tickets--multiplied by younger daughter and two friends--and $25 on T-shirts. It was 95 in the shade. And when these young men came out for a bow, I stood up, screamed, "THANK YOU!" and then I was shrieking. Shrieks of joy.

Which goes to show you, even hell has an end.

We've been talking on the blog about mining your life for your books, stealing people's traits . . . and when you write comedy, I would venture to say it starts to get personal. I think the best stand-ups are the ones who talk about their real life. A comic riff, like Seinfeld, on nothing. Or everything. In my comedic books, I have riffed vicariously through my characters on egotistical authors, thongs, the self-help guru who will sleep with any young thing but his wife, turning the big 4-0, the fact that I can't cook, fear of flying, the time I took six xanax to get on a plane flight and lived to tell about it (they were only .5 milligrams, and for the record, they did NOTHING to calm me), evil mothers-in-law (she actually temps in hell), the way the NY Giants screw me every season, my insane love for the Yankees, and disobedient dogs. And so, I imagine, I will one day use my visit to this particular circle of hell in a book.

And while I was there . . . I was strangely comforted by that thought. You see, those are two hours I CAN NEVER GET BACK. And so it's nice to know, "Heck, I can use this."

OH! AND . . . on the way home, the girls were starving and BEGGED me for food from this restaurant. I had never been to one. Never eaten their food. Never knew! I was appalled!!! Do you know they have a cardboard stand-up cut-out of a COW in front? My baby son said, "Look, Mama, it's a MOO." And I was struck by the fact that they have a cute black and white "moo" out front . . . and yet people were driving through to EAT the cute moo. This reaffirmed my commitment to vegetarianism. AND please? A moo? Sick. SICK! What is this company thinking putting poor Mr. Moo there? Oh, yeah. Material.

Thoughts? When life hands you a bit of insanity, are your comforted by the fact that it's material? And how was YOUR weekend.

And special birthday wishes to Spy and Karmela.